Honest and Unmerciful Music Reviews

Everything Everything – Get To Heaven ALBUM REVIEW

This review is late. Get To Heaven, Everything Everything’s third studio album, came out over a month ago, and though I meant to review it when it came out, life, as it often does, got in the way. This, for the record, is what happens when you don’t do reviews as a job; you end up putting things off.

However, I couldn’t not put my thoughts down about this album in some form, because, on this album, Everything Everything’s indie-pop has reached new levels of irresistible lunacy.

From depicting the image of an old man being swept off the streets by the fuzz to a drooling “fat child in a push chair”, the band haven’t lost their touch for oddball lyrics. Where most would look ridiculous trying to pull off dark political lyrics amidst a sunny tropical instrumental, Everything Everything seem to do it with ease; the peppy “Distant Past” and title track are both solemn in theme and ecstatic in delivery. The band even manages to get away with a sly reference to their own commercial expectation in “Regret”, asking “did you think that everything everything would change?” I’m not sure if this was intentional, but it’s probably best just to assume so when a band’s lyrics are as convoluted and abstract as this.

Having said this, some of the slower, more explorative tracks can be a little unfulfilling. “The Wheel (Is Turning Now)” builds and builds in volume, and just as you’re expecting the drums and perhaps some of that classic manic falsetto to kick back in, it merely restarts the synth part, then finishes. “Fortune 500” suffers from similar symptoms, I just wish these two tracks had more of a meteoric crash, a fitting climax; they didn’t feel like all the pieces were in place.

Additionally, production-wise this album can feel a little compressed, but then again, the majority of these songs are so damn catchy, yet simultaneously bizarre that it doesn’t really matter. There’s rarely a moment where the ambitions of this album aren’t met. Tracks such as “Zero Pharaoh” and “Blast Doors” incorporate breathy synths and clicking percussive elements seamlessly into the mix, the guitar work on opening track “To The Blade” is awesome, and even Jonathan Higgs’ near-rapped verses on “Distant Past” come naturally.

Is this Everything Everything’s finest album yet? I think it’s fair to say so. On this album, we hear a band who know exactly what they want to do, a band who aren’t trying to appeal to some great overlord, a band who can deliver endlessly catchy songs without sacrificing musical integrity, without conforming to clichés or pop-music stereotypes.

I’m excited about Everything Everything, they seem to be limitlessly creative and unlike a lot of bands out there today, aggressively direct with their mantra.